The New Factographers

I edited some more 30-second bits from walking in and out of Union Square establishments. In most of these 10 cases it ended up being a study on what music is played on a Sunday afternoon inside a business in USq. Here’s a ZIP containing the original WAVs for broadcast within Toast-y walls, or sample the MP3s if yer interested:

Market Basket - musical transitions

justin — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 03:51:52 +0000

I layered and edited down five particularly noisy segments from my 15 minute recording at Market Basket, each segment between 30 and 55 seconds. Should be decent transitions between musics. Check out the MP3s here, but download the original WAVs (zip) for playback on our special night. For some nonsensical reason they all start with the letter ‘C’.

Working on more musical transitions sourced from walking in and out of USq. establishments.

BTW, did a Flickr search for “Union Square Somerville” — 1150 photos come up. Probably could do a tag search to find some more.

Alex Test

Jesse — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 11:53:01 +0000

Hey Alex,

Was this sort of what you were thinking about for the video?

http://newfactographers.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/alextest.mov

the indie sounds of union square

francisca — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 21:29:21 +0000

My first Union Square visit was to PAs Lounge to see Nikki Sudden play a heart-wrenching set to maybe 15 people on a St. Patrick’s Day weekend in 2006. It was memorable and fascinating and dark and cold. So to honor the magnetic pull of Union Square, I’d like to document one night at PAs Lounge for this project. PAs strikes me as a sort of “entrypoint” into Union Square for people from all over the city, country and even the world (a band from Tokyo is playing there this month!). And it does so by offering a space for music so that bands from all over can share their sound with the people of Somerville/Boston. And I dig that. I plan to be at PAs on Tuesday, April 8 when These United States play there. Join me if you can.

An ethnography of parking

jennifer — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 16:12:08 +0000

After some time in the parking lot of Market Basket, I had a very preliminary idea about what I’d like to do, at least for the production side of a piece. It goes something like this: we all know people from all over the world shop at Market Basket, and goods are stocked thusly. What I find interesting in the parking lot is that the cars demonstrate another kind of diversity, which is maybe more about personal and local differences, rather than about ethnic identity. Yesterday, I saw: License plates from Mass, New Hampshire, Ohio (!). A police officer’s car. A Marine’s car. A Buddhist monk getting into his minivan. A whole lotta zipcars. Rosaries on rearview mirrors. Bumper stickers: My kid goes to X school. My dog is the best in the world. Etc.

So, my plan is to shoot a one-hour sample of who’s in the Market Basket through its parking lot. This would involve cars and people coming and going, possibly some brief conversations or interviews about why people shop there and where
they life, and/or a slide show of the artifacts and bumper stickers, etc. that personalize the cars (I took a few pictures like this yesterday). I’ll do this at a very busy time, either 5 pm or so on a weekday, or on a Saturday afternoon. I’m thinking it could be cut into a 2 or 3 minute piece, or sliced and diced into something else. Or cut together with my MB interiors, which are mostly of the produce section. I’d love to include some boxing club and/or cemetery material, too.

Three Bike Videos

Jesse — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 23:51:43 +0000

Three videos shot today riding Thacher’s tricked-out reggae bike and handlebar camera-mounts. Links:

Video #1 (Somerville Ave - Webster Ave - Newtown St - Union Square)

Video #2 (Union Square - Bonner Ave - Columbus Ave - Prospect Hill Pkwy - Munroe St - Stone Ave - Union Square)

Video #3 (Union Square - Bow St - Summer St - School St - Somerville Ave - Granite St)

three-deckers

alex — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 21:53:11 +0000

Lots of fun today, everybody. Here’s a link to an album I put up this morning of Union Square’s triple-decker apartment houses (or, as my friend’s dad who grew up in Dorcester insists they’re called, “three-deckers”). Please let me know what you think works and what doesn’t. This is an unedited batch I did on Saturday, and it would be easy to cull some and add more. In particular, I might think about trying to standardize lighting and size a bit more. Let me know any thoughts you have! Thanks!